Ireland in song, dance, photographs, videos, stories, music, literature, much of it sourced in YouTube by BrianClarkeNUJ

Saturday, March 30, 2013

PERVERTED LORDS OF BRITISH EVIL

A new generation of secret courts will be established in law within weeks after a last-ditch bid to water down controversial government plans failed in the House of Lords.

Amnesty International warned of a "terrible day for British justice" after Lib Dem peers obeyed a three-line government whip to reject amendments to strengthen the role of judges in the new courts.

The justice and security bill, which extends the secretive closed material procedures (CMPs) into the main civil courts in England and Wales, will be sent to the Queen for royal assent before she opens a new session of parliament on 8 May.

Tim Hancock, Amnesty International's UK campaigns director, said: "This is a terrible day for British justice. After fierce lobbying by the government, peers have failed to restore even minimal amendments previously included to this deeply damaging bill. The cherished and vitally important principle that justice must be done and seen to be done has been dealt a serious blow this evening."

Kenneth Clarke, the minister without portfolio who championed the bill, says it is necessary to introduce the CMPs to allow sensitive intelligence to be heard in court, though this will be limited to the judge and to special advocates cleared for security who would represent claimants. Clarke claims the government has had to pay compensation to alleged victims of torture because some evidence cannot be heard in open court.

The government won on Tuesday night when peers voted by 174 to 158, a majority of 16, to reject a Labour amendment to allow the CMPs to be convened only if a judge rules that it would be impossible to reach a fair verdict "by any other means".

A separate amendment by Lord Macdonald of River Glaven, the Lib Dem former director of public prosecutions, which would have given judges the power to balance the interests of "national security" and "fair and open administration of justice" was withdrawn.

Lord Beecham, who moved the unsuccessful Labour amendment, said: "[Ken] Clarke's adherence to liberal principles over the years has earned him many admirers in a lifetime in politics, though not necessarily within his own party. I hope that by endorsing these amendments the house can not only help to minimise the damage that threatens the most valued elements of our jurisprudence and judicial system but also help rescue the minister without portfolio from self-inflicted damage on his own reputation for upholding those liberal values as he comes to the end of his most distinguished career."

Macdonald told peers: "The illiberalism inherent in this bill lies in this: that CMPs, as presently constituted, are not fair because they don't deliver and can't deliver balanced justice between the citizen and the state."

Lord Wallace of Tankerness, the Lib Dem advocate general for Scotland who also acts as the attorney general's spokesman in the Lords, said the government had made key changes to the bill to reflect concerns in the Lords after peers had defeated the government during an earlier stage of the bill. Wallace said: "The decision rests with the judge not the secretary of state … what we have sought to do is to ensure that this should be a procedure used only in very exceptional circumstances."

Clare Algar, executive director of the human rights charity Reprieve, said: "This is a disastrous result for British justice. Not only are we now facing a wave of secret courts at odds with our centuries-old legal freedoms; but we have not even seen the minor safeguards upheld which would have made them less dangerous.

"It is deeply shameful that the government has been allowed to push these plans through parliament, despite the total lack of evidence that they are needed. Secret courts will not make us any safer. They will, however, do irreparable damage to our reputation as a country which respects fair play and the rule of law."

Thin end of the wedge. Watch as this gets extended to cover anything and everything the government of the day finds embarassing. We already have Dole Offices and Immigration Tribunals which think they are above the law, now every other little jack-in-office will be able to abuse their office with impunity.

@Stephenweaver - Would those be the immigration tribunals who upheld the law in the case of Mr Q?

0

@gharrison14 - I believe the Immigration Tribunals have largely backed Mrs May, their paymistress, it is the judiciary which has upheld the law of the land despite political pressure. As I consider Mrs May to be almost as dangerous to Britains' wellbeing as Mr Quatada, I am sitting back and watching them bite each other's tentacles with some amusement.

@gharrison14 - I believe the Immigration Tribunals have largely backed Mrs May, their paymistress, it is the judiciary which has upheld the law of the land despite political pressure. As I consider Mrs May to be almost as dangerous to Britains' wellbeing as Mr Quatada, I am sitting back and watching them bite each other's tentacles with some amusement.

55

Disgusting.
A sad day indeed for Britain.
Somehow, we have all allowed this to happen.

There were two major failures really, none of which you can lay the blame on us for.

The first was the fact that the Liberal Democrats in the HoC, once again sold out on their principles and peddled this bill, despite the fact that their party members overwhelmingly voted against it.

The second was that those in the HoL didn't manage to get enough people to veto it a second time.

The failure was from those in power, and those alone, none of this was our fault.

Either way, welcome to our undemocratic, so called; 'United' Kingdom.

15

"The illiberalism inherent in this bill lies in this: that CMPs, as presently constituted, are not fair because they don't deliver and can't deliver balanced justice between the citizen and the state."

The Lib Dems are no longer a party with its own ideas, it has become the left wing of the Tory party. It is now more blue than orange and should just change and become part of the Tory party.

It has done little to protect the people from the Tory craze to make the UK a country just for the rich.It has approved tax cuts, not pushed its mansion tax, so its improved the wealth of the rich whilst kicking those it represents in the butt regularly.

Funny how power changes believes so quickly. Clegg and Blaire are the same, once in power they became true blue Tories.

(Sorry, but that's about the kindest thing I could think of to say after reading this article which shows Britain edging ever closer to the totalitarian oligarchy so desired by the rich and powerful people in control).

Maybe I could move to an independent Scotland......but Salmond is best mates with Murdoch. Are there any desert islands left unsold I could strand myself on?

@RonJB - you're welcome :) However Blair is Murdoch's daughter's godfather; Cameron is constantly at parties with the whole gang of them. Salmond speaks to him on the phone and you think they're best mates?

Why stop st secret courts? How about a secret police? Secretly arrest people for things they might be secretly thinking? Then secretly torture them, until they admit that's what they're thinking. Then use that as evidence in secret.

"On Friday's UK Column Live we reported that Tim Rustige, another campaigner for justice for Hollie Greig, was arrested at his home by officers from Grampian Police.

Having been called by his father, Tim's son arrived at the address to find the garage door was open and a Grampian officer searching it. He asked for and was shown ID but when he asked to see the search warrant he was told to go to another officer upstairs. Having found the second police officer in his Dad's bedroom, he again asked for the search warrant, but was told to "stay quiet or you'll be arrested too." He then sat on the bed till the officer had finished his apparently unlawful search.

There was apparently another Grampian officer searching the downstairs rooms making three in all, with another two in a van outside. In the end they his mother's computer, despite him protesting that was her computer, not his father's, and that he could produce the receipt, as he and she had bought it together.

It is suspected that the police took this computer because his father's bail condition is that he is not allowed to go online. It would appear they believed he had been using the second computer.

The arrest of Tim Rustige by Grampian police, apparently without a search warrant, and possibly without an arrest warrant, raises serious questions. Grampian police have already demonstrated with the similar treatment of Robert Green, another campaigner for Hollie Greig, that they are prepared to unlawfully enter his home to remove evidence exposing criminal activity by the establishment.

Grampian Police said that Tim would be held over the weekend and appear in court on Monday. We believe he is now back home, but so far this is unconfirmed. Keep an eye out for updates on this on UK Column Live".

At least they can no longer claim what we always knew to be a lie - that we live in a free and democratic country which obeys the rule of law. I actually welcome this an end to hypocrisy. Being ordered to do something by a court no longer has the same legitimacy when you know it's a bourgeois court.

So now all of those alleged VIP paedophiles can be tried in a secret court on the grounds of National Security, so no one will know who they are, what they were alleged to have done and the reasons why they will have been to found to be innocent, unless of course people search the Internet.

So now all of those alleged VIP paedophiles can be tried in a secret court on the grounds of National Security, so no one will know who they are, what they were alleged to have done and the reasons why they will have been to found to be innocent, unless of course people search the Internet.

This government is driving me straight into lawful rebellion. Becoming a freeman on the land is the only way I can see, that at some possible point in the future, I will not be charged with having done nothing to stop this fascism and treason.

No surprises here !! As for Kenneth Clarke! He is the man whose policies removed legal aid in civil cases from thousands of people and has steered through this abysmal Bill. No wonder he goes to Bilderberger meetings.

I shall be resigning from the Liberral Democrat party today. Being part of the government is more important to Mr Clegg than protecting the fundamentals of British Justice.

“Evidence” that cannot be challenged in an open court is not evidence, it is supposition and hearsay. There cannot be two standards of examination of evidence, as there cannot be two standards of examination of scientific facts. If someone is appointed by the government to challenge the suppositions and hearsay presented to the court in closed sessions, this is clearly open to considerable abuse, and therefore is not justice.

The government cannot play fast and loose with people’s lives, without completely open challenge. People manipulate facts and evidence all the time. People manipulate other people; that’s what politics is about, day in day out. So don’t be surprised if the people in a closed legal system are manipulated. It happened in the secret service and the government when we went to war in Iraq. It will go on happening.

The government always has a choice in matters of national security – which is the greater evil – supposedly letting a guilty person go free because the government is not willing to release evidence into open court, or maintaining a source of information that will save more lives in the future. That is the only decision we should allow them to be making.

The government is very well aware that any public protest about this legal denial of open justice will be limited to a few letters in the local rag. Compare this to the march on London and riotous behaviour in Parliament square when fox hunting was banned. How very very British.

7

We are now officially living in a Nazi, fascist, totalitarian dictatorship

Amnesty International warned of a "terrible day for British justice" afterLib Dem peers obeyed a three-line government whip to reject amendments to strengthen the role of judges in the new courts.

[My emphasis]

Which once again begs the question: what is the LibDem party for? As someone who has voted for them in every election since 97, on the basis that they apprently stood for something less noxious than brutal, callous Conservativism or the imbecile war criminals who parasitised Labour, I just see no difference any more: having tasted the tiny lick of power condescended upon them by Cameron, they have broken promises, allowed the Coalition to reach record heights of Nasty Tory policy, and now -- this farrago of injustice.

Is there any reason left for those of us who ever voted LibDem to bother doing so again?

As for the new secret courts, we seem to be following the US (as always), and I now seriously wonder how long it will be before our security services are able to warrantlessly tap and interfere with every aspect of our lives, and our next PM is granted the power, beyond and immune to the law, to murder, using a drone, a British citizen in any part of the world?

Once we regarded such 'law' with outrage if practised behind the Iron Curtain and in totalitarian regimes such as Bulgaria, Romania and others.

Now we are blindly led, by ambitious fools wilfully unconscious of the lessons of history, into becoming everything we so rightly despised.

@si15 - Ourselves. There never was a more pressing need for open assemblies, grassroots democracy, and an end to the system of handing our autonomy over to a bunch of blackguards once every four or five years.

@si15 - Actually - I was thinking the Greens are starting to look like they're the only real 'viable' protectors if civil liberties left. Check out their manifesto - it is pretty much what you'd expect the Lib Dems to be.

I've avoided them in the thought that they don't really have a chance, however, I think I have changed that position now for 2 reasons:
1) The managed to come in from obscurity in Oz
2) Winning isn't everything. Like the UKIP vote is driving policy at the moment, and I doubt anyone seriously thinks we are going to have a UKIP government anytime soon, maybe the Green vote can drag things in a more sensible direction

So we have an unelected chamber, consisting of people who supposedly have a free vote on government bills, having its GlibDem members effectively overruled by a three-line whip dictated by their Tory overlords.
Pathetic.

A lot of LibDem members here are discussing resigning. Is there any mechanism for you to regain control of your party instead? I'd be surprised if any rank and file LibDems agree with this legislation.

Put your hands up if you are daft enough to think that voting New Labour in the next election will change this?

It's a race to the bottom of the barrel. New Labour started this and the Tories have continued it. If they get voted out then New Labour will continue this once again.

The only vote they will understand is one of no confidence in them and the system they wish to continue.

Spoil your ballot or do not vote. Please, for yours and your children's future - stop voting for one or the other cheek of the same arse. Drop your petty flag waving allegiances and demand a proper democratic system.

Strange to believe this is the same Tory party which made such a song and dance about ID cards and how they would strip British citizens of their human rights and civil liberties, ID cards which are the norm pretty well everywhere else in the world.

Now we have secret courts, removal of legal aid, rights of appeal quashed, the likes of ATOS making decisions specifically designed to impoverish the most vulnerable in society, Iain Duncan Smith trading benefit entitlement for Easter Eggs, Police Commissioners appointing their friends to high paid positions courtesy of the public purse and Tory Donors seeking to remove the basic rights of ordinary working people by buying policy over supper in Sam's kitchen.

Even more laughable than the UKIPpers and frothers describing the Health Service as "Stalinist".

The dreams of the last century, that increased mechanisation and automation would lead to increased leisure time for the masses, relieved of the drudgery and sheer mindlessness of much unskilled work. Instead, compounded by the outsourcing of jobs and the influx of cheap immigrant workers, the best the 21st century can come up is forced labour at slave wage levels, extended working hours, and the age of retirement heading for 70. So with the stroke of IDS's pen, we go from an economic strategy that deliberately creates mass unemployment to one that deliberately creates cheap labour. Brilliant. There's an honour in this for you, Ian, rehabilitation, glory, a statue.

My God, my ancestors will be turning in their graves. The Tories are finally realising what they have long dreamed of - throughout the years of the post-war settlement, they moodily incubated a determination to reverse the social and economic gains fought for and won by people of unparalleled toughness and determination, people who took on the might of privilege and wealth and defeated it. This is the New Tory moment; this when they come out from behind their cosmetic masks of reasonableness and fairness and social concern and display their true dark hearts before the world.

But I reserve my greatest contempt for those of us on the left; this is all happening on our watch. We betray those people I mentioned above, who vanquished the landowners and the factory and coal owners. And what are WE up against? a couple of Bullingdon hooray-henries and a leadership reject with the political acumen of petrified bird droppings . But the neoliberal apologists and careerist politicians that have infested the Labour Movement see only the votes of bigoted Middle Englanders and the ignorant Sun reading dross that posts here waiting to be harvested. The latter busy calling for their own enslavement, too ignorant or misinformed to notice the turkey staring back at them in the mirror of a Christmas Morning. And in the new Dark Age heralded in by IDS, every morning will be Christmas Morning for the beneficiaries, the businesses who will exploit this measure to access free labour, the talk of charities being a transparent smoke screen to hide the fundamental dismantling of the human right for a fair day's pay for a fair day's work.

Make no mistake, this is just the beginning. Anyone who thinks that once the principle of unpaid labour has breached the social repugnance it generates that it will stop at a month's work for 'idlers' is the kind of fool the Tories are relying on get this through. These are the descendants of people who built vast fortunes and empires on the sweat and death of their factories and workhouses; they are past masters at dressing up inequality and evil in Protestant work ethics and biblical rhetoric denouncing the peril of idleness - except where it's practised in its purest forms of course, by digital fortune shufflers and land owning parasites drawing their subsidies while they indulge Mediterranean waves with their oversized cock-yachts.

Shame, shame on us all. Tolstoy said everyone was innocent. I say everyone is guilty. And our children will never forgive us for allowing this to happen. The Tories talk of not saddling future generations with our debt; I think only of future generations facing the return of evils greater than any debt, that we had long thought banished from the lexicon of social intercourse and post war economics, all presented as some kind of economic panacea. Who is really 'taking the piss' here?

...to highlight just a few examples (there are many more) - coupled with the treatment dished out to whistleblowers - I doubt if we will have to wait long before anti-austerity activists wind up in front of one of these.

Since when did the Lords get to decide legislation? Their role is to review and amend and send back to the Commons for final approval. Isn't it? Or has something been subtly changed? Not that it would surprise me at all.

The State. No more or less than grubby little people with their hands in our pockets looking to purloin whatever they can, from you and me, for naught. And don't content yourself that these thieving bastards are the exceptions - it goes throughout the system like dry-rot.

For the development of dry rot, a special set of conditions must exist. For thieving bastards to use the apparatus and mechanisms of the state to rob you, me, our inheritance, our children, our wealth, our future, our businesses, farms, villages, towns and our whole darn nation, scoffing every morsel they can, there needs to be a special set of conditions too. And those conditions are no more, or less, than simply the presence of the apparatus and mechanisms of the state.

If the apparatus and mechanisms exist you will be robbed, endlessly. Not maybe but 100% defiantly because that is exactly what the apparatus and mechanisms of the state are designed for. It has always been that way and it always will. The only variable is how powerful the apparatus and mechanisms are, the weaker the less effective they are at thieving the lifeblood of humanity the better you may be able to get-on. But weaker they are not getting. No no!

Like dry-rot, the state, once it infests, it can only momently stagnate or grow. You will not get it to go away without destroying every timber it has reached into. If you let it grow it will consume more and more. It is ruthless and it is veracious.

The only good thing is that eventually it destroys everything of the material on which it is hosted and then it dies. So in the end, ultimate victims of the ultimate state, we will all be sucked dry and left to crumble in the wind. Then we may have a chance to build it up again and we can only hope that next time with more resistance, confidence and pragmatism.

What we have is a government that is hacking everyone's sites, anybody with anything to say of any value has their comments altered at a later date by aspects of the government that trawl through media supplements comments boxes so to be able to discredit anyone who has anything to state of any value that they deem to be contentious or that infringes upon their credibility.

Welcome to the age of netcentric warfare and netcentric terrorism, when censorship cannot be enforced then espionage and acts of criminal damage is what they perpetrate instead.

Has Treasury shot itself in the foot?

From Mr Adrian Jack.

This next part really makes me laugh as anything that contributes to GDP/GNP growth looks good for the central executive and the Treasury, although in practicality it is not so effective or practicable in the efficient management of a planed economy or the regional financial administration of revenue and financial infrastructure support.

Because municipal borrowing is part of the national debt, the net effect is that the total interest payable on consolidated pubic borrowing increases.

ie: All the crap about the deficit that should not exist as we are sitting on an abundance of resource and manpower.

At the same time, the governments profit from the margin on lending to local authorities drops to zero, because none of the latter will borrow on the exchequers terms.

Which once again looks good for the government figuratively and also helps those blood sucking financiers with their PFI's adn FMI"S to choke the life out of local authorities I guess.

This is a lose-lose situation, would the chancellor not do better to lend a more modest uplift?

Well Jack, that is not at one persons discretion and at whose you and I will never know.

I have been giving it much thought Jack, although I am no longer sure how the Treasury borrow to Local Authorities, I believe it is all fraudulent due to a lack of disclosure concerning financial aggregate management of the public finances and revenue.﻿

Now it might seem rather superficial, the changing of the word practicable to practice and deficit to deceit, although when somebody reads that comment at a later date it no longer makes sense as the context of the statement has been completely altered so inevitably the reader stops reading and moves on to another comment.

Two things come to mind .
Firstly this odious legislation isn`t necessarily for keeps . I`m sure I have seen a quote from the shadow Minister deprecating the vote . Is he prepared to say that a Labour majority would secure Its repeal , if so he gets my vote and as a 1970`s member of the real Liberal Party I can only think that Jo Grimond and members of that vintage would be turning in their graves .
Secondly you would have to think that the best hope would be for a robust and independent legal profession and judiciary but all the signs are that this gov``t is determined to bring the Bar to it`s knees and turn the business over to Tesco .
All this being said rather than wring our hands and scream Fascists we would do better to join Liberty in numbers because this clearly is not the last battle .

What are our politicians afraid of, the possibility that the public will find out what they have been really up to in the name of the public? The public have a right to know. Just another example of smoke and mirrors

3. CIVIL LIBERTIES
We will be strong in defence of freedom. The Government believes that the British state has become too authoritarian, and that over the past decade it has abused and eroded fundamental human freedoms and historic civil liberties. We need to restore the rights of individuals in the face of encroaching state power, in keeping with Britain’s tradition of freedom and fairness.

W.e. 31/03/2013, the year that the Tory Party, with the aid of it's Lib-Dem partners started to drive the final few nails into the coffin of democracy and the ability of the courts tp hold the government to account.

This week week have the bill for secret courts and and the retroactive legislation to deprive 250,000 people of their benefits that the Court of Appeals awarded them.

And what did the Labour Party do while this happened? They held the hands of the Con-Dem's, swinging like the small child between the two "grown-up" parties as the country is led towards a darker future.